Nomadic Economies of Tourism

Last Weekend I was in Washington D.C. photographing for a multitude of reasons, and I noticed something, probably because of the stark contrast from its larger environment. Like many global tourist destinations, D.C.’s monuments are punctuated by the vendors of various wares that commemorate your visit, or even more generally, the sense of patriotism that this pilgrimage entails. No doubt these same vendors dot the streets of New York, but they integrate, blend into the landscape and varigated street views and eyelines, much more that the against the austere marble backdrops of the National Mall. Interestingly, these mobile booths are in my quick tour of the Mall, staffed by recent immigrants, or at least by those not overly well versed in the English language, trying to barter deals for “Freedom isn’t Free” t-shirts, and Osama bin Laden Most Wanted posters. I begin to wonder about the urban flows of these groups, who owns the trucks, controls this product, and how to do these people become employed, and thrust so close to the proverbial national heart so quickly, to most likely be completely invisible to Washington Playpeople, as they make their daily political grinds.

In Front of the Department of the Interior

In Front of the National Archives

Human Migratory Patterns

The Center for Urban Pedagogy investigates these connections between the movement of people and goods, the fundamental fulcrum points of transportation and how these flows feed into each other. 

Saskia Sassen coined the term “global city” which essentially “is a city deemed to be an important node point in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalisation can be understood as largely created, facilitated and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade. The most complex of these entities is the “global city,” whereby the linkages binding a city have a direct and tangible effect on global affairs through socio-economic means. The terminology of “global city”, as opposed to megacity, is thought to have been first coined by Saskia Sassen in reference to London, New York and Tokyo in her 1991 work The Global City” 

Kyong Park possession-less lifestyle has fostered a new mode of global nomadism, often reacting strongly to the speed of hyper flat transportation and technology’s destruction of human scale time relationships Kyong has taken to moving whole condemned houses with him across the world.

Are these groups fragments of the global populations that inhabit massive tent cities in China, following the production of the goods that inevitably find their way to the front door of my house, or are they non-linear inhabitants of a multitude of global cities, moving from place to place plugging in to the available labor at specific points?

Some Serious Tent cities:
Guantánamo Bay Caribbean Relief Site
Pass Christian, Mississippi
Tent City Urbanism

Sidenote
According to Urban Dictionary, “blag” means , “To gain, usually entrance to a restricted area or club, or some material good, through confidence trickery or cheekiness.” Or “To make up as you go along”

Who knew?